The dangerous mix of Donald Trump, Prime Minister Trudeau’s departure and the coming Federal election, is putting huge pressure on Cabinet Ministers and members of the Liberal caucus to pick a winner in the current Liberal Leadership race.

Of the seven candidates thus far, Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland are the front-runners, with the credible, youthful Karina Gould, a distant third.

With no strong Quebec candidate in the running for the party leadership the choice made by two senior Quebec Ministers becomes very important. Both Francois-Phillippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and Melanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, have declared for Carney. Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc remains the most senior francophone minister in the Cabinet.

Among other senior ministers also supporting Carney are the Labour Minister, Steve MacKinnon, a bilingual Ottawa area MP, originally from PEI. Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, the minister most identified with the controversial Carbon Tax, is now saying he is “forced to recognize that the Carbon Tax is “very unpopular.”

Against the Flow is a new blog that will deal with serious and difficult topics, and occasionally with softer subjects too. It will side with politics that strives to do the right thing, as opposed to favouring quick and easy answers. Rather than practising mere public relations, it will encourage journalism that seeks the truth and explores what is really going on in the community. It will praise political leaders who take responsibility for their words, actions and mistakes. It will show respect for First Nations peoples for their great strengths and for the many injustices they are overcoming. It will salute those who recognize that our planet is both burning up and drowning due to climate change and undertake to fight on behalf of Planet Earth. 

Midst the unprecedented swirl of major International and national events, New Brunswick new Premier, Susan Holt has matters well in hand, moving her province well beyond the dreary days of former Premier Blaine Higgs.

On the national stage, Premier Holt has taken a solid “Team Canada” approach and fit in well with New Brunswick’s other main political figure, federal Finance and Intergovernmental minister, Dominic LeBlanc.

Premier Susan Holt has already delivered the central message to New Brunswickers about her government, turning politics here from “me” to “we” – throwing the “I” approach to governing of former Premier Blaine Higgs into the ash can in favour of a commendable “team approach.”

The team ethic is already very evident in her reliance on her cabinet colleagues and her caucus members. It was clear right from election night when she rhymed off virtually every member of her team in the first blush of victory.

After nine years as Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau deserves our thanks for his service in a very challenging time.

Since last summer, the Against the Flow blog has twice called on the Prime Minister to leave. Mr. Trudeau ignored this small voice and that of many others. To the end, he believed that he was the best person and political campaigner to combat Pierre Poilievre, the Leader of the Conservative Party, and the dangerous threats against Canada of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump.

As argued earlier in the space, Trudeau will not be remembered for one great accomplishment such as that which his father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau achieved with the patriation of the Canadian constitution and the Charter of Rights.
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Yet, Justin Trudeau has had many achievements, including:

• Managing the COVID pandemic in the early 2020’s.
• Introducing several progressive social programs, notably the national Day Care program which has been of great benefit to many young Canadian families.
• Improving the lot of Indigenous peoples through openness to negotiations, especially on child welfare. Quality drinking water is a fundamental human necessity and although efforts are still insufficient, the Trudeau government made strides with First Nations communities toward improving water services.
• Helping make Canada a world leader in combatting climate change. We will return to this topic below because Trudeau did not respond quickly enough to the very real backlash against the Carbon Tax that he and his government implemented and chose to stick with.
• And lastly, something more personal, that despite his separation from his spouse, he continued addressing the demands of his office with strength and without complaint.
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On the negative side, the factors which ultimately outweighed the good he was doing as Prime Minister, included the following:

• Failing to appreciate fully the impact on average Canadians of the sharply rising cost of groceries and housing.
• Making serious errors of judgment in the management of people closest to him in government. Four cabinet ministers, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, and David Lametti, either left the government or were dropped from it.  The loss of both Bennett and Lametti contributed to the key Liberal by-election losses in St. Paul’s and Lasalle ridings in Toronto and Montreal, respectively. Finally, Trudeau’s provoked the resignation of his long-loyal Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland. This was the ultimate undoing of his Prime Ministership.
• Obviously, Trudeau’s insufficient attention to caucus relations also contributed greatly to the palace revolt of so many of his MP’s.
• As mentioned above, the government placed a strong priority on Climate change, but Trudeau seemed blind to the damage being done to him and his government by the relentless campaign by Opposition Leader Poilievre against the Carbon Tax. Trudeau’s government never properly defended or explained the tax. Nor did the government adequately explain the compensatory deposits made directly into citizens’ bank accounts for the cost of the Carbon Tax.
• Lastly, Trudeau departed from good straight talk in favor of what in this space we have called “Marshmallow Talk.”  This contributed to the increasing sentiment against Trudeau which can only be called hatred. Evidence of this near the home base of this blog, was a very large sign outside a modest house, saying, “F*ck Trudeau.” For whatever reason, our Prime Minister could not read the writing on the wall about this this sentiment which would ultimately destroy his political career.

Close to 40 years after his father, Pierre Trudeau, took his proverbial walk in the snow, it is time for Justin Trudeau to do the same thing and resign.

As was also true for his father, Justin, is a very proud man and wants to make the most important decision of his life when he is ready. After nine years in the country’s top job, we owe him this much.

Now that he is in a blizzard of controversy and his leadership is extremely fragile, Justin Trudeau must take Parliament’s holiday break to reflect and then announce that he is leaving.

​The late stages of Pierre Trudeau’s career were much as they are now for Justin. Pierre Trudeau’s closest ally and confidant, Marc Lalonde worried back in 1984 that Pierre no longer had the support of his caucus.      
   
Now, Justin Trudeau has just had his erstwhile strongest supporter and Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland leave his side in a bitter departure that rocked the nation.

Marshal Phillipe Petain the future leader of the part of France that was collaborating with Adolf Hitler, stated: “In three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” This prompted Churchill’s strong retort.

Adolf Hitler’s forces had easily marched into France and the world was a very scary place at that time, as it is today.

The grit of Churchill inspired Canadians to rally to Churchill’s call to defeat Adolf Hitler and his juggernaut.

Why should Canadians stand up to the bully figure of Trump today? Because it does matter when Trump pushes us around and shows he does not respect us as a people. The world is again headed in a very dangerous direction, and as the old saying tells us, the world has a way of beating its path to our door.

The dangers signals are there with Trump. No sooner had he won a massive victory in the Presidential election than he began parading out the most frightening, self-serving, mega-rich individuals to conduct his faulty vision for the United States, Canada and the World.

From out of a very dark cave, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally took steps this week toward restoring his reputation as a man with a purpose.
 
Along with his Public Safety Minister, Dominic Leblanc and his chief of staff, Katie Telford, the PM flew down to have an important dinner with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. It was not an earth-shattering occasion, but if was significant in view of Trump’s threat to impose a twenty-five per cent tariff on all goods entering the U.S.A.
 
Furthermore, when Mr. Trudeau returned to Ottawa, he quickly briefed the leaders of the Opposition parties, including Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre who until then had kept his distance from any involvement in a Team Canada approach to the tariff threat.
 
It was an action-packed week with yet another notice of a Conservative Non-Confidence Motion for the government. Get serious, Mr. Poilievre: A “Carbon Tax election” during the Holiday Season and when there is a national crisis over the tariff!

The last five months have been very heavy, with two big, continuing wars, and many elections, including the last, very serious one in the U.S.A. which rocked almost all Canadians. It is long past time for something lighter and completely different.

This writer sometimes draws amusement and diversion from things in the natural world, many of them that I see out my workroom window. With the fall weather and the leaves almost all down, our feathered friends and animals keep going full tilt preparing for winter.

The crow, with its jet-black plumage, is one of my fine feathered friends which people could easily dismiss as dreary and uninteresting but is one of the most intelligent birds in the sky.

For instance, the other morning when just a few apples were left hanging on a nearby tree, I spotted a big crow spearing some apples with her dagger-like beak. Shuffling her feet down to a crook in the branch, she wedged the apple there, to better enjoy her breakfast.

When he had completed the work of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Murray Sinclair said: “We have described for you a mountain. We have shown for you the way to the top. We call on you to do the climbing.”
 
This was Murray Sinclair’s challenge for the country. After the commission had listened to the difficult stories of the survivors of the Residential Schools and their families, he set out in simple, and non-vindicative terms what this country should continue to work hard to achieve, in a word “respect.”
 
This week the late Sinclair was honored at a commemorative ceremony that would not have been likely in two other wealthy countries with large indigenous populations, Australia and the U.S.A. Those two nations have been at best aggressive or at worst genocidal to their First Peoples. On the other hand, one other country, New Zealand, has done as much or more than Canada in reconciling with its First Peoples. And Murray Sinclair has done more than any other Canadian in helping this country improve its record.